I suck at watercolors (Documented Life Project #14)

OhMyGoodnessOhMyGoodnessOhMyGoodness… I had some free time on my hands last week and I thought it would be nice to dive into the Documented Life Project and make another art journal with the challenges the DLP-team provides. It had been a few weeks since I looked at the site, so I surfed to Art to the 5th to see where I left off. It turned out I had to work with this challenge:

April 4
April Theme: Color Safari (Exploring Inks and Paints)
Art Challenge: Watercolors
Journal Prompt: It’s Water Under the Bridge

Oops.
Watercolors (or, as we say in the Netherlands, ‘aquarel’)

It’s not my favorite material/technique to work with, I don’t know much about it either (or maybe I should say: “I don’t WANT to know much about it…”) but OK, I committed myself to make a page with each challenge so I decided to give it a go.

First, I googled “watercolor paintings with water” to see if something would pop up that could inspire me. NOT A GOOD IDEA! This is what I saw on my screen…

… and I closed it right away! These images made it crystal clear:

I.AM.NOT.GOOD.AT.WORKING.WITH.WATERCOLORS

looking too long at these paintings would only make me feel more insecure.

Now we do have a lot of watercolor paint in the house, as my beloved was a gifted watercolor artist, once. I say “once” because I never actually seen him with a brush (and we are together for 17 years) but we still have the paintings he made before I knew him. Here’s two of his watercolor paintings.

So, what to do?
I decided to make it easy on myself and go with the phrase “It’s Water Under the Bridge” and a photo to start with. I found this picture on the Internet (sorry, I don’t remember where I found it and who to give credit for… )

Next, I sketched in a few lines where the water had to be placed on the page. I used ‘bistre’ and water to paint that spot.

Then I transferred the photo onto the page. The photo didn’t transfer well, there lay a white haze over the image. Here’s how it looked.

I came to the point that I wanted to throw this page away and skip this challenge, but hey, that’s not me. So I ploughed on and got the watercolor-box on the table after all. I painted the photo like it was a picture in a coloring book and here’s the result.

It’s not my favorite page. I guess you would not even had recognized a bridge (and water under it) if you had not seen the photo first. That’s OK. I would not have seen it either.

I peeked at the next challenge (acrylic paints; what a relief! I can work with that) and the next (gelli-plate, yay!) and am looking forward to play with that.

Let’s forget about this page, shall we?
In any case, thanks for looking.
Have a nice weekend.
Make sure you have some fun.
Play with acrylics!